One of my pet hates is food waste. Although I\u2019m sure it plays a major role in adding to my middle-age spread, my need to hoover up children\u2019s leftover bread crusts, bacon rinds, vegetables and other discarded titbits is as much thanks to an urge to ensure that nothing is thrown away, as it is to gluttony. Which is why I\u2019m naturally drawn to articles such as one in the Guardian recently which highlighted a local pub in Norfolk, where customers are greeted with a sign that reads: \u2018If you breed, grow, shoot or steal anything you feel may be at home on our menu, ask at the bar. Let\u2019s do a deal.\u2019 The pub landlord has a system of swapping pints for food. Although I\u2019m not condoning the idea of stealing to supply the local pub, the concept of moving surplus food from allotments, private gardens or smallholdings to local outlets is surely something that should benefit all local communities, especially at a time when most of us are dealing with tighter budgets. Between organised food swaps, surplus produce market stalls and \u2018farm gate sales\u2019 a lot of hidden food waste could be eliminated. One of the problems with end of summer vegetable and fruit gluts is that many simply don\u2019t have the time to collect and deliver their surplus to someone who can use it. These are the sorts of projects that local volunteer organisations are so good at, so it\u2019s worth a call to local food groups to find out who might help. In the meantime, whilst writing this, I have demolished the best part of a packet of chocolate fingers \u2026 all thanks to another pet hate of mine \u2026 giving unhealthy food to my children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of my pet hates is food waste. Although I\u2019m sure it plays a major role in adding to my middle-age spread, my need to hoover up children\u2019s leftover bread crusts, bacon rinds,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-editorials","tag-fergus-byrne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}